Early life

Kendrick was born on August 9, 1985, in Portland, Maine.[1][2] She is the daughter of Janice (née Cooke), an accountant, and William Kendrick, a history teacher who also works in finance.[3] Her maternal grandparents were Ronald (1916–2006)[4] and Ruth (née Small) Cooke (1918–2011).[5] She has an older brother, actor Michael Cooke Kendrick, who appeared in the 2000 film Looking for an Echo. She is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent.[6] She attended Deering High School in Portland before entering the entertainment business.[7]

Kendrick made her film debut in the musical film Camp. Her performance as the nerdy Fritzi Wagner earned her a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance. She went on to play an ambitious high school debater in Rocket Science (2007), for which she earned a subsequent Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Female.

In 2010, Kendrick again appeared as Jessica Stanley in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Later that year, she appeared in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, in which she played the sister of the title character. The film did not fare well at the box office, but has emerged as a cult classic over time. In 2011, she appeared in the critically acclaimed comedy-drama 50/50, playing an inexperienced therapist to a cancer patient played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Later that year, she reprised her role of Jessica Stanley in Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011), her final on-screen appearance in The Twilight Saga.

Kendrick's most successful film of 2012 was the musical comedy Pitch Perfect (2012), loosely based on the non-fiction book Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory. Kendrick played the protagonist of the film, leading an ensemble cast including Skylar Astin, Rebel Wilson, Adam DeVine, Anna Camp, Brittany Snow, and more. She played Beca Mitchell, a rebellious college freshman who joins an a cappella group called the Barden Bellas and finds that her more modern approach to music clashes with the traditional approach of the group's leader. The film emerged as a major commercial success and received mostly positive reviews from critics, who called Kendrick's performance "splendid", saying that she "hits just the right note between pithy and chummy."[10]

In 2013, Kendrick featured in the romantic comedy-drama Drinking Buddies, which received mostly positive reviews from critics, as well as the largely panned fantasy comedy Rapture-Palooza.

At the Sundance Film Festival in January 2014, Kendrick was featured in three films. She played leading roles in the comedy-drama Happy Christmas and the horror comedy The Voices, which both received generally favorable reviews from critics, as well as a supporting role in the zombie comedy Life After Beth. Both Happy Christmas and Life After Beth received limited releases later in 2014, while The Voices was given a limited release in early 2015.

Kendrick played a supporting role in Digging for Fire, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and received a limited release in August of that year. In May 2015, she reprised her role of Beca Mitchell in Pitch Perfect 2 (2015). The film, which followed Mitchell in her senior year of college as the co-president of the Barden Bellas, emerged as a major box office blockbuster and surpassed the success of the first film.